The massive power supply. Don't drop this on your foot! It includes a 2400V 1.5A ICAS Dahl transformer, which should supply 800 mA at 3.2 kV under load all day long. The back (not visible) is made of perforated metal for air intake. Total filter capacitance is 30 uF at 4050V and the four bridge arms are made of 5 6A10 diodes each. | |
Here is the chassis at
an early stage of construction. The cutout at the lower right is for
the tube unit (see next picture). The panel seen here is actually a
subpanel; the front panel will be 3-1/2" in front of it. There will
be
2"
of clearance underneath the chassis. The main elements of
construction
are 1/8" aluminum sheet, 1/2" square rod, and 3/4" x 1/8" angle
stock. I don't pretend to be an expert metalworker, and everything is done with hand tools except for a handheld jigsaw and a drill press. Nice tank coil, isn't it? Too bad it didn't work! This layout made the bandswitch leads so long that it wasn't possible to get a low enough inductance on 10 meters. The new tank appears in a photo below. |
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The tube unit,
comprising the input circuit, tube and socket, plate RF choke,
blower,
and T/R relays. I plan to use a piece of supercharger hose to
conduct
hot air from the tube to the outside of the enclosure. The blower is a bit more capable than needed, but you can't have too much air! I only hope it will not be too noisy. |
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This is the tube unit
viewed from below. The large black object at the bottom is the 100
watt
noninductive swamping resistor in its heat sink. It is directly
opposite the air supply from the blower, so it will stay cool. There are two small coils to the left of the socket: the lower one is the inductor in the pi-section lowpass filter, and the upper one is an RF choke wound on a resistor that is in series with the screen. The socket has a built-in bypass of 1500 pf. The large discs connected to the screen terminals are not capacitors -- they are MOVs to protect the driver in the event of flashovers. I found that a bypass capacitor of 0.01 uf on the cold side of the swamping resistor and a similar capacitor in series with the input were not sufficient to provide a low enough impedance on 160 meters. In order to get a 1:1 SWR to the transceiver, I added 0.1 uf capacitors in parallel. Just to be sure, I did the same with the screen bypass. |
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This is how the tube unit fits under the chassis. The bottom plate will have a hole for the air intake. | |
In order to tune up the tank circuit, I needed to be able to set the vacuum tuning capacitor precisely. So I temporarily mounted a counter dial on the subpanel and made a calibration chart for the capacitor. I used the very accurate AADE LC meter to measure the value of the capacitor at every 5 divisions of the dial. I also recorded the dial readings for the calculated values of capacitance for each band. | |
I used this setup to
find the correct positions for the tank coil taps for each band.
First,
I used G3SEK's Excel spreadsheet (you
can download it
here) to calculate the pi-network values for a load impedance
of
1815 ohms. Note: it is important to calculate the impedance using the load line, because the usual approximation -- RL= (Ea/Ia)/k where k = 1.5 to 1.7 for class AB -- is very far off (at least it was in my case). I measured the inductance of my Ameritron RF choke (225 uh) and various stray capacitances to enter into the spreadsheet, using the AADE meter. This is important for accurate results. Then I connected a 1815 ohm resistor from the tube plate to ground (all of this with power not connected, of course). I connected an antenna analyzer to the amplifier output. It will show a 1:1 SWR when 50 ohms is transformed to 1815 ohms. For each band, I set the tuning capacitor to the appropriate value given in the spreadsheet, and located the point on the coil that gave minimum SWR. Iteratively adjusting the loading and tuning capacitors brought it to 1:1. When the point of 1:1 SWR coincided with the calculated value of capacitance, I fixed the tap in place. This was easier to do than to explain. The hard part was working in such close quarters with the coils and the switch! |
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Here are the assembled
G3SEK Tetrode Boards, ready to go! This unit along with several
large
resistors and a transistor on a big heatsink, make up the regulators
and protective circuitry for the amplifier. All of these components
will go between the front panel and the subpanel. The top and bottom
covers of this space will be made of perforated material so that all
of
these components can be convection-cooled. |
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The original tank
circuit would not provide the correct impedance transformation on 10
meters, because the layout made it impossible to get a small enough
inductance on 10 meters. So I redid the tank circuit as you see
here. Instead of trying to use 3/16" tubing for the 80 through 10 meter portions, I used it only for 20 through 10. The Airdux coil is used for 160, 80 and 40 meters. It is no. 12 wire, which might be a bit small on 40. I decided to try it and see. Yes, the coil is made of two chunks of Airdux spliced together. After I see how it works on 40, I'll think about replacing it (but read Robert M. Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" to see why this is OK). |
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Here's the front view of the chassis. The screen supply transformer will go in front of the RF choke, and another small transformer for grid bias and QSK relay power in the hole in front of the vacuum capacitor. | |
The little toroid next
to the 160 meter padder capacitor is the safety choke across the
amplifier output. It drains the charge from the blocking capacitor
and
prevents the full plate voltage from appearing on the antenna if the
blocking capacitor should develop a short. Many commercial
amplifiers use a receiving-type choke rated at 300 mA here; but
I
wanted to be sure that the power supply breakers would pop if the
blocking capacitor shorts. The choke is wound with no. 18 wire on a ferrite core. Theoretically it will have a high enough impecance on 160-10 meters so that it won't burn out. We'll find out! Incidentally, I used the mica padding capacitor instead of the usual ceramic doorknob because it is able to pass a large current without heating up and changing value, as sometimes happens with the doorknobs. |
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I have test-fitted most
of the parts for the enclosure here. There are lots of parts that
will
go in between the subpanel and the front panel, including the
Tetrode
boards. The top, bottom, and sides are 1/16" aluminum. |
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Here's the back of the
enclosure. The BNC-like connector is actually an MHV connector for
the
coax that will supply the 3200V plate voltage. The other power
supply
interconnections are made to the blue socket at the bottom. |
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Starting to put things together! It almost looks like it will be an amplifier. | |
Here is another view
with the front panel temporarily attached. All that space between
the
panels will be filled with the control circuits, screen regulator
parts, etc. I'm a bit worried about the transformers so close to the tank coils. Now I'm thinking the layout should be entirely different, with the transformers on one side, and shielded from the RF components! We'll see if this becomes a problem. |
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The front panel. I put
it together to check that the shafts lined up, etc. I will take it
apart to install components between panels and wire it up. Meter holes were made with a jigsaw. I drilled four 3/8" holes for each meter and connected them up, then cleaned up with a file. I have never found a better way to do this job -- my drill press is much too fast on its slowest speed to use a hole saw properly. |
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Wiring! The large heatsink on the left is for the screen regulator MOSFET. Note that the top and bottom of the section between the panels will be perforated metal, so the components will be cooled by convection. The 'missing' capacitors from the Tetrode Boards stack on the right have been relocated between the boards because some lid failed to pay close enough attention to clearance for the meter. Screen and plate meters can be calibrated with the trimpots mounted on them. The other trimpots on the dial mechanism are for the HV and RF output meters. The Tetrode Boards have been tested and adjusted. I lost a week by accidentallly switching two wires during testing, and burned out the transformer for the QSK circuit. Lots of dissassembly required to get to it. |
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At last it's beginning to look like an amplifier! There's still plenty to do. Although the bias and screen supplies are checked out, I haven't applied HV yet. I still need to cut holes in the top and bottom covers for airflow. And I plan to add some fans to a "1000 watt" dummy load I have to make it safe for the 1500 watts I expect from this amplifier! | |
The amplifier showed
proper behavior with bias, screen voltage, and HV applied, so it's
time
to see what happens with a little RF drive. Here I am about to try
it
with about 12 watts from my K2 (I wasn't quite ready to risk my K3
yet!) Results were excellent! 12 watts of drive produced more than 750 watts output. I should be able to get full legal power from 25 watts drive. I still need to cut an exhaust hole in the top cover and fit a silicone rubber chimney to the tube; make a new meter scale for the multimeter (bottom left); and a few other things. Then I will tune it up with full drive on all bands. You can see the dummy load sitting on top of the power supply near the wattmeter. I added two fans to handle this job! |
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It's finished! Well, sort of. It is producing in excess of the legal limit on 160 through 10 meters, but there are a few minor changes that I want to make, such as adding a circuit to slow the blower when the amplifier is in standby (and keep it running for a while after transmitting). But I think I will operate it for a while to flush out any problems or weak spots that I don't know about. This has been a long project, more than two years of sporadic work. I made a lot of mistakes and had to go back and redo things several times. I might even redo the tank circuit yet again. |